The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (6 page)

In the time since, I have told the same story, but in my own words, to those who loved her and those who missed her, and the ones like me, who were trying to read between the lines.

Now I’m telling you.

THE LEGEND OF FIONA LOOMIS

The moment that Fiona Loomis touched the cylinder of water, she felt a tickle in her fingers. The tickle carbonated her body, spreading from her fingers to her arms, to her chest, to her feet, until everything was fizzing and the lightbulb above her was not a lightbulb at all. It was the sun.

She fell from the sky, her body stretched out and gently curved like a corn husk. She fell for a very long time, but she fell slowly, just like a husk or maybe a feather or a flake of snow. When she hit water, she hardly felt the impact, but she kept going, deeper and deeper into the dark, farther from the sun.

There were no fish, no colors other than blue, and it wasn’t until the blue was almost black and her eardrums began to ache and her lungs began to strain that Fiona had the thought that would begin her story.

There once was a girl who could swim.

At four years old, Fiona had never swum before. She’d never seen the ocean or been in a pool, but once the thought entered her mind, a wish was granted, and she began to kick her feet like a dolphin kicks its tail and to move her arms like the fronds of a jellyfish, and she rose up through the water until she reached the surface.

Fiona bobbed in a vast ocean. There was no land in sight, no boats, no animals to speak of. It was now her instinct to tread water, because she was a girl who could swim. It was also now her instinct to tell a story.

The girl who could swim was very lonely and she wanted a friend.

This thought brought forth a cylinder of water, grabbed from the ocean by an unseen force and held in the air in front of Fiona.

One day she met a bush baby.

The cylinder of water morphed into the shape of a bush baby, with giant eyes and knobby fingers and ears that were stiff and alert. It was translucent at first, a creation born of water, but the water soon took on the red of blood, and the beige of skin, and the brown of fur, until there was a real-life bush baby in front of Fiona, exactly like the ones she had once seen in the nocturnal building at the zoo.

As soon as it was fully formed, the bush baby fell from the air into the water, and Fiona watched it sink into the dark.

The bush baby could swim, just as good as the girl.

With that thought, the bush baby shifted its path and pulled itself up through the water until it was treading next to Fiona.

The bush baby was named Toby, and he was smart and he could talk too.

Toby smiled and said, “Hello, Fiona, it is so nice to see you.”

Fiona smiled and said, “Hello, Toby, I’m so glad we’re friends.”

“What brings you to Aquavania?” Toby asked.

“I don’t know,” Fiona replied. “I touched water and then I was here.”

“Ahh,” Toby said, raising a little finger. “You’re new. So much to learn.”

“What is this place?”

“It is everywhere and nowhere. It is where stories are born.”

“What stories?”

“Stories we tell children. Magical worlds. They exist. They are born here in Aquavania and they seep into the minds of the people who write the books and paint the paintings and film the movies. Why, you’re creating a world right now. A world where a girl named Fiona swims with her bush baby friend named Toby.”

The only world Fiona wanted was the world where she came from, with Mommy and Daddy and her brother, Derek, and her sister, Maria.

The thoughts about swimming and the bush baby had been made real, and so too was this one. Fiona felt the fizz fill her body again, and in a flash she was back, standing on the box, her hand on the warm boiler, the lightbulb dangling above her in the basement of her family’s home. She went upstairs and clambered into bed.

Three years would go by before the radiators spoke again.

Fiona had tried to forget about her trip to Aquavania, but it was one of the only things from her days as a four-year-old that she remembered. She told her family about it a few times, and they called it “nothing but a silly dream.”

The night the radiators did speak again, Fiona was not so willing to follow. She had recently stopped sleeping with a night-light, so maybe it was the darkness of her room—punctured only by the glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers on the ceiling—but the voice didn’t sound as inviting as before. It had a mischievous bite to it.

“I don’t want to go there,” Fiona whispered as she pulled the sheet up over her head. “It’s wet and lonely and scary.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” The voice crackled in the air, an irresistible enticement.

Fiona peeked out from the sheet and asked, “What can it be?”

“Almost anything.”

To a girl of ample imagination, “almost anything” was far too tempting. So she snuck back down the stairs to the room with the boiler. The boiler disappeared, and the cylinder of water hung there. She touched the cylinder. She went back to Aquavania.

Toby was floating in the ocean, waiting for her.

“It’s been so long,” he said.

“You’ve been waiting ever since I last visited?”

“More or less. Time is different here. People like you arrive precisely when you need to and go home exactly when you left.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You will.”

There was a rumble in the ocean. It was Toby’s stomach.

The bush baby named Toby liked popcorn, and he liked to eat it on the beach of a beautiful island where amazing animals lived.

A dome of water rose up from the ocean, and geysers burst out of it and froze into the shapes of palm trees. Ferns and creatures and soft earth followed, and Fiona and Toby soon found themselves sitting on the sand, inches from the surf, a giant bowl of popcorn resting between them.

“Wonderfooool!” Toby exclaimed, his mouth full of popcorn.

Fiona giggled and ate the popcorn until she couldn’t fit another kernel in her stomach, and then she and Toby explored the brand-new island. There were glorious birds with neon wings and corkscrew beaks. There were waterfalls as tall as skyscrapers and enormous swimming holes full of singing sea lions and ringed with flowers that smelled like bacon and pie, which were Fiona’s favorite smells.

“Did everything come from my mind?” she asked.

“It did,” Toby told her.

“But I don’t remember thinking about all of it.”

“Your mind is constantly wishing, even if you don’t realize it. It’s all in there somewhere. Aquavania is the place where it’s released.”

“Anything I can imagine can come true?”

“Yes and no. You are the author. But these things are now alive. They are no longer a part of you, but you are responsible for them.”

“Like a pet?”

“Sort of,” Toby said. “Thoughts change. Evolve. On their own. Be careful, though. Aquavania is a strange and powerful place, and you are not the only one here.”

“There are others like me?”

“Yes.”

“Does everyone get to come here? My brother? My sister? My parents?”

Toby shook his head and pointed to Fiona’s ears. “Only the children with the imagination to hear.” Then he pointed to her eyes. “Only the children with the willingness to see.”

“So only young people?”

“Not every child is young,” Toby said.

The explanations were too weird and exhausting for Fiona to contemplate. Instead of pressing Toby further, she imagined a bed made of marshmallows hanging from vines under the shade of palm trees, and Aquavania gave her exactly what she imagined. She climbed onto the bed and fell asleep.

When she woke the next morning, she was still on the island with Toby and all the other animals. This frightened her, for surely her parents were missing her back home.

Fiona left Aquavania to go home, but assured Toby and the animals on the island that she would be back.

Once again, Fiona was instantly transported to the box in the room in her basement, her hand on the warm boiler.

She hurried upstairs, expecting to find her family awake and worried, but it was still dark and everyone was still asleep. When she reached her bedroom, she checked her clock. She had been in Aquavania for nearly a day, but according to the clock, she hadn’t even been gone three minutes.

Her family was likely to tell her it was only a dream, but she knew it was more than that. She was no longer that naïve little four-year-old who confessed everything. She was the ripe old age of seven, and Aquavania was now her secret. And she was going back.

Fiona’s version was more detailed, and she told it confidently, as if she’d been rehearsing it for years, patiently waiting to get it off her chest. It wasn’t without emotion, but it was precise and focused, and I didn’t know what to make of it other than wanting to hear more.

More would have to wait.

“Alistair!” my mom hollered.

I peered around Frog Rock and saw her standing on the back deck. Worry ruled her posture. Her neck was craned. Her arms dangled helplessly.

“I’ll be a second,” I whispered to Fiona as I got up from the chair.

Fiona responded with a curt nod, but I could tell she wasn’t thrilled about the interruption. She had only just begun her story.

“What?” I barked as I stepped into the grass. “I’m busy.”

“Thank god,” my mom whimpered. “Oh, thank god.”

She dashed toward me, and we met halfway through the yard, where she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me as if to test my existence.

“There’s been an accident,” she told me. “Fireworks. Charlie is in the hospital.”

S
UNDAY
, O
CTOBER
22

The details were gory indeed. According to my mom, Kyle woke to a bang sometime around eight thirty on Saturday morning, but, like everyone else in the neighborhood, he had ignored it. It was the beginning of hunting season and men with muzzle-loaders were thick in the forests nearby. At nine o’clock, when Kyle ducked behind the clubhouse for a smoke, he found Charlie unconscious, his hands a mangled mess, and the box of fireworks nearby. Some of the feral cats had gathered and were licking the blood off of Charlie’s body. Kyle shooed them away with a stick, carried his little brother to the van, and ferried him to the hospital. The doctors said Charlie was minutes away from dying of blood loss when he arrived and, for at least a few minutes, Kyle was a hero. When he admitted that the fireworks were his, his reputation resumed its default position. He was irresponsible, dangerous, an unforgivable variety of older brother.

People had wondered if I was involved. My alibi was solid, backed up by Fiona, though we didn’t reveal the nature of our conversation. “We were making up a story together,” she had told my parents and the police.

A boy and girl hanging out behind a rock? Making up a story? They certainly didn’t believe that, but they also didn’t believe we had anything to do with Charlie’s accident.

I wasn’t allowed to visit Charlie until Sunday morning. He had spent hours in surgery and needed time to sleep off the effects.

My dad drove me to the hospital, and on the way he told me, “When I was a kid, even younger than you, there was a guy down the street who I was friends with. One day we were playing ball. A few days later and he’s diagnosed with polio. He died not long after that.”

“You think Charlie is gonna die?”

“No, no, I don’t think that,” my dad assured me. “I’m trying to tell you that life will sneak up on you sometimes. Even though you’re a kid, it doesn’t mean you’re invincible.”

“I’m aware, Dad.”

The truth is, I wasn’t aware. Not really. But I would be.

*   *   *

There were cartoon puppies and pinwheels on the fading wallpaper of Charlie’s room. The same motif was echoed in the sheets and blankets. This was the children’s ward, and it didn’t matter if you were four or fourteen; everyone got puppies and pinwheels.

Movies had taught me that hospital rooms were terrifying places, with screaming and crying and human vegetables hooked up to wheezing machines. Charlie’s room, while slightly depressing, wasn’t nearly so bad, and Charlie himself—tucked in and mounted on his mechanical bed so he had a perfect view of the TV—looked almost serene.

“Hey,” I said as I stepped around the curtain. My dad waited in the hall, gathering the prognosis from Charlie’s parents.

Charlie gave me a devilish grin as he pulled his hands out from under the blankets. He waved two gauzy lumps.

“Hey, buddy.” The words crawled out from his dry throat. “Missed the grand finale.”

“Jeez,” I replied. I looked at the heart rate monitor. The blips were steady.

“It’s okay,” Charlie said. “Stupid bottle rockets. Wrap twenty together and they pack a wallop.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What? Why? I’m sorry you missed it. How many times do you get to see a kid blow off five of his fingers?”

“Oh man … that many?”

“Two on the left hand, three on the right.”

My first thought was,
How will Charlie ever play video games again?
And while that may seem shallow, it had probably been Charlie’s first thought as well.

“I should have been there with you,” I said. “To stop it.”

Charlie shook his head. “You were busy.”

“I guess.”

“Did you tape all of yesterday’s shows?”

“I … no.” This was a big difference between us. Had I been the one in the hospital, he would have been presenting me with a VHS of all the television I’d missed during my hours of surgery and recovery. Instead, I brought him a bag of gummy bears. I set it on his tray next to his barely touched breakfast.

“Oh well,” Charlie said. “I guess there’s always summer reruns.” Gummy bears were his favorite, but they couldn’t make up for missing a day of television.

“Want me to open them?”

He raised the wrapped remains of his hands, and with a grin he said, “What do you think?”

Shortly after that, a nurse whisked into the room to change the bandages, and I used it as my cue to escape. Down the hall, I found my dad sitting on the edge of the reception desk, cradling a cup of coffee to his chest. Standing next to him, Charlie’s dad held the ribbon of a Mylar balloon that was shaped like a cat’s head.